From heartbreak to high impact—Dr. Shelly-Ann Gajadhar has turned her pain into purpose, and her purpose into a platform. Today, she stands as the powerhouse behind AlphaStute, a thriving space that champions over 200 ambitious women every single month. But this wasn’t always her story. Born from the depths of grief and refined through grace, Dr. Shelly-Ann’s journey is one of radical transformation. She didn’t just survive—she rose, built, and decided that every lesson she learned along the way would be poured back into women who are called to lead, love, and live out loud. This is not just about business. This is legacy. This is joy redefined. This is Shelly-Ann.
Before the accolades, before the courtrooms, and long before becoming a powerhouse voice in coaching and advocacy, Dr. Shelly-Ann Gajadhar was simply the girl with a fierce curiosity and a quiet, burning ambition to make a difference. Raised by a single East Indian mother in Trinidad, Shelly-Ann’s early life was anything but ordinary. Her mother, having been disowned by her parents for choosing love across racial lines, stood as the blueprint for resilience. Ostracized by her community and left to raise a child on her own, she forged a world from sheer will and creativity.
Shelly-Ann grew up witnessing what it meant to create something from nothing. Though they lacked material wealth, her mother ensured she never felt lacking. “The only thing I didn’t get was a pony,” she would later joke—but everything else her heart desired, her mother made happen. That spirit of making the impossible possible would shape her future.
From the tender age of seven or eight, law had captured Shelly-Ann’s imagination. Evenings spent watching Law & Order with her mother ignited something in her—the commanding presence of lawyers, the power to influence, the weight of justice. Her dream was clear: she would become a lawyer. Not only would she be the first in her family to attend university, but she would excel. And she did—winning national scholarships at every academic level, excelling through high school, university, law school, a Master’s degree, and even a PhD. Always high-performing. Always top of her class.
But her story is not one of smooth ascents. Her childhood was spent in Carenage, Trinidad—a community where the residential street she lived on ran parallel to the “ghetto.” Gunshots, police raids, and the normalization of violence were woven into the background of her upbringing. She would peer through the decorative holes in the walls of her home and see reality unfold—reality that eventually touched her personally. At just 16, she lost her first love to gun violence. It would not be the last time death by gunfire would mark her story.
Still, Shelly-Ann pushed forward, eventually becoming a state prosecutor. She never lost a case. She thrived in law, loved the courtroom, and carried a dream of rising through the ranks—perhaps even becoming a judge. She was mentored by a powerhouse woman: a Queen’s Counsel and President of the Criminal Bar Association, Dana Seetahal. To work under such a formidable force in law felt like everything was aligning. Shelly-Ann saw possibility. She saw purpose. She saw her future.
But everything shattered the day her mentor was assassinated.
It wasn’t just the loss of a woman she admired deeply—it was the way the system responded, or rather, failed to respond. No debrief. No counseling. Just silence. The next day, they were back in court, as if nothing had happened. That experience broke something sacred in Shelly-Ann: her belief in the system and the safety of her dreams within it. She was just 25 when she made the hardest decision of her life—she walked away. She handed in her resignation and turned her back on a career she had worked tirelessly for.
It was a deeply isolating decision, not least because her mother, the woman who had sacrificed everything to see her daughter succeed, could not support her choice. Leaving law meant going against everything her family believed was success. But Shelly-Ann knew something vital: fear and trauma should never be normalized.
In Trinidad, we’ve normalized trauma,” she reflects. “We walk past crime scenes like they’re just another Tuesday. We share videos of people murdered in the streets as if it’s entertainment. But the truth is—your spirit remembers what your eyes see.”
No one seemed to understand that she was not just reacting emotionally—she was reacting humanly. Her spirit was wounded, her safety felt compromised, and her sense of justice betrayed. She didn’t study all those years to live in fear. And while the rest of the system moved on, she couldn’t.
This was not weakness. This was an awakening.
“I have to say, looking back, it wasn’t random. It was divine orchestration. Because the truth is, I wasn’t seeking anything consciously, at least not in the traditional sense. I wasn’t sitting there praying for a PhD or saying, “God, please make me an academic.” I was just trying to survive. But in those moments of grief, when everything is stripped away—title, identity, community—you either find something deeper, or you lose yourself entirely.
And for me, what I found was faith. Not the performative, Sunday-only kind of faith. But the gritty, “God, I don’t know what You’re doing, but I’m trusting You anyway” kind. It was faith that held me when I didn’t have answers. Faith that helped me get on that plane to Edinburgh, Scotland with no backup plan. Faith that told me, even this will be used.
I remember being in my tiny apartment in Scotland, cold and alone, crying some nights because I had no one there. But those were also the moments I felt closest to God. It was in those still places He reminded me that I was more than my career, more than my pain, more than the labels I carried. And it was in that space that I started to ask, “What if everything I’ve gone through is meant to be used—not hidden?”
So now, my faith is the root of everything. It informs how I mentor, how I speak, how I lead. I mentor from a place of knowing what it’s like to break and rebuild. And I always tell the women I work with—you don’t need to have it all figured out. You just need to keep moving, keep trusting. There’s purpose in every piece of the process.
Now that I’m on the other side, I realize—it wasn’t a detour. It was the route. Every breakdown was part of the breakthrough.
…it was just something that, you know, you just transition from one thing to the next. Opportunities came up, doors opened, and yes, on the surface, it looked like a sequence of events. But for me, it was deeply spiritual. There were too many moments where I knew it wasn’t just me. It wasn’t just timing. It was God, clearing paths, placing people, stirring desires I didn’t even know I had yet.
And one of those people was my mentor, Dana. I don’t even think she understands the full impact she had on me. She was the first person who mentored me in a way that wasn’t about achievement or perfection, but about purpose and identity. She taught me how to hold space for people, not to fix them, not to advise them all the time, but to see them.
Dana always said, “As a State Prosecutor, you are a minister of justice. Carry yourself like it.” And I carry that with me now. Showing up as a mentor is sacred work. It’s not about hierarchy or even having all the answers. It’s about walking with people through their valley moments — through the fog of grief, the uncertainty of transition, the terrifying beauty of growth. It’s about being a mirror, reflecting their light back to them when they’ve forgotten it.
And because I know what it’s like to have to reinvent, to uproot, to rebuild from ground zero — I mentor from that place. From lived experience. I focus on helping women find clarity in chaos, helping them translate their pain into power.
I’ve mentored women from different backgrounds —professionals trying to make sense of a career they’ve outgrown; others are students grappling with identity and ambition.
But what’s common is this quiet hunger: to live on purpose, not just exist. Brilliant women, gifted, burned out, afraid to pivot — who just need to know that reinvention is not betrayal. Sometimes, it’s obedience. Sometimes, it’s God saying, “I have more for you than this box you’ve put yourself in.”
ALPHASTUTE
The moment Dana was assassinated, faith wasn’t just a word — it became my oxygen. “I leaned very heavily on God. The depths of despair and anger and rage that I was in — only God could take me out of that.”
In that season, Dr. Shelly-Ann disappeared. From friends. From family. From the world.
For three years, silence wrapped around her like a second skin. She spoke to no one. The space between loss and language was where she learned to breathe again. “I had to figure out myself, figure out who I was. And I leaned on God every day to keep my heart soft.”
Because soft wasn’t something women like her were allowed to be. “There was a point I thought, maybe I was too soft — too emotional — and that’s why my career in law didn’t work out.” But slowly, truth began to find her: “softness isn’t weakness. It’s strength. It’s survival. And more importantly, “it was okay to say I was grieving. It was okay to say I was hurting. It was okay to rewrite my story on my terms.”
And she didn’t hide. Not anymore. She shared her career transition openly online. That visibility came with whispers. “People gossiped. Laughed. They asked, ‘What’s she doing now?’” But she kept walking.
While in Scotland, she started working part-time at a school, helping students with CVs and cover letters. A small job. But it mattered. “I enjoyed it because I was helping people navigate their careers while navigating my own.”
And that’s where Alphastute was born. Not from a vision board. Not from an investor-backed launch. From CVs. From $150TT sessions. From a simple flyer posted while she was still a master’s student. “I just said, hey, this is who I am. This is what I’m offering.”
She didn’t care what people thought. “It was about joy. About answering God’s call.”
By the second year of her PhD, the work had grown. People booked sessions, asking for personal statements, consultations, and scholarships. Eventually, even senior female leaders reached out for advice on navigating workplace challenges and career pivots. “Alphastute wasn’t built on coaching. It was built on service. And God expanded it.”
ON HIGH PERFORMERS and HIDDEN WOUNDS
Today, she coaches high-performing women. Outwardly brilliant women — but inwardly burdened. What’s the one blind spot she sees most?
“A deep-seated sense of unworthiness.”
It’s heartbreaking, she admits. “High-performing women are masters at the mask. We are productive. We are impactful. We have all the accolades. But underneath all of that?” She pauses. “We’re still asking, am I enough?”
Real fulfillment, she teaches, isn’t about the title, salary, or applause. “It’s about how you see yourself. Because a lot of us want to finally believe: I am worthy. No one had to give me that worth. I always had it.”
When she works with women, they dig deep. Deeper than goals. Deeper than strategy. They excavate the beliefs that shaped them, many from childhood. “We saw our mothers work tirelessly. We were told you have to earn love and earn success. So now we’re just repeating it — trauma dressed in ambition.”
Go Bravely: The Divine Instruction
When she first heard the phrase “Go Bravely,” she was in the middle of five jobs and a PhD. Burnt out, overwhelmed, and called. “I had this weight on my heart to start a business, but I was terrified.” She cried. Prayed. Asked if this was really what God wanted.
“The answer was clear: Yes. And then I heard it — Go Bravely.”
So, she did.
With just £1,000 saved from five jobs, she built Alphastute with a website developer, a PR consultant, and some branding. And then came the TV interviews in Trinidad. She flew back from London to launch it.
“No one was talking about career development in this way for Caribbean nationals. It was either high school to college or nothing. I wanted to speak to those in the in-between — the ones in transition.”
And Go Bravely became more than a phrase. It became a way of life. A track. A movement. A mantra. A spoken word piece that my husband asked me to write for his album, now with over 1.5 million streams. It became a spiritual rallying cry for women around the world.
What is Go Bravely?
“It’s to passionately pursue your soul’s calling in the face of fear.” Not what your parents told you.
Not what culture conditioned you to chase. But what your soul knows.
That is the ethos of her mentorship community — now 200+ women strong — and the foundation on which she continues to build.
The Silent Struggle for Authority
To her, authority isn’t about job titles. It’s about showing up, influencing outcomes, and owning your space. Yet many women fear stepping into that power because they worry about how it will be received.
“There’s so much pressure on women to masculinize themselves in leadership roles. We end up playing a game that was never meant for us.”
Rather than avoid, we must explore and know our leadership style instead of trying to fit into outdated molds. “We must ask what kind of leader I want to be?’ or ‘What legacy do I want to leave?’ Dr. Shelly-Ann says.
What I often find is the opposite, and the result? Women either mute themselves or overcompensate, fearing they’ll be seen as either too soft or too aggressive. Softness is not a Weakness,
…and she is adamant that empathy and vulnerability are leadership strengths, not flaws.
“Leading with understanding doesn’t make us less powerful—it amplifies our strength. We do not have to conform to male-dominated standards of success. “We’re trying to play a man’s game in a woman’s body. And we’re exhausted.”
READ MORE OF DR. SHELLY-ANN’S STORY WHEN YOU CLICK ON THE MAGAZINE.
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